Author's note: Haris is a Saudi word which means building caretaker, janitor, errand man and security rolled into one. It has no exact equivalent in English, so I retained it as it is in this article which appeared in Saudi Gazette's Voices section. The word mutawa which I used in this article refers to religious police or authorities. This is the original version of the story.
I am posting the article in this blog although it has nothing to do with money or business as I have been too busy the past few weeks with some other things to give me time for blogging.
By CASIANO MAYOR JR.
Although she was a stray cat, she did not act like one. Unlike the common stray cats which would avoid humans coming their way, mimi would go near us with the cats’ usual greeting “meow” as if telling us that she was a friend. Over time, we got fond of her and christened her “mimi”, the generic name of endearment Filipinos give to cats they become fond of. One day after driving my daughter to school and my wife to the hospital where she works, I saw mimi sleeping on our doormat. “Mimi, get out of my way,” I told her.
She did not move. But when I opened the door, she spritely entered the house ahead of me, her tail raised high, and walked with a regal gait as if she had springs on her feet. She reminded me of the pampered cats in the animation film “The Aristocats” which my wife and I had bought for our child when she was in nursery school. I shouted at mimi to come back and get out of the house. She strutted past our living room, which also serves as our dining room, and went straight to our bedroom where she seemed to be sniffing for something.
Was she looking for a rat to catch? I would have no way of knowing. I could sometimes read the minds of people, but it is difficult to read the minds of cats. Knowing that she would not listen to my pleadings, or even scolding, I opened a can of sardines I took from our kitchen cabinet, made her smell it and lured her out of the house. She followed me and I led her to the parking area where our occasional feeding session started on a plot under unspruced plants where I had placed a plastic plate.
My daughter and I often talked about mimi and how different she was from the common stray cats. We speculated that perhaps she was a domesticated cat abandoned by her masters. The topic reminded me of the problem of overpopulation in the growing metropolis like Jeddah where sprawling home backyards have to give way to high-rise buildings to accommodate more people.
Our daughter had once suggested to her mother that we adopt mimi as a pet but my wife firmly put her foot down with a sermon: “And where do you think she will sleep and move her feces?” My wife added that the cat’s furs strewn all over the house could cause us asthma. Besides, I told our child that taking cats and dogs for pets is prohibited in Saudi Arabia and that we have to abide by the Kingdom’s laws and respect its culture and traditions. I have read somewhere that the mutawas consider cats and dogs to be symbols of the decadent Western culture.
So I just kept on feeding mimi under those untrimmed plants beside the parking area whenever we had table leftovers. We did not feed the kittens as they would hide under the discarded furniture every time they saw us. I think mimi was breastfeeding them. We found out that there were six of them when our haris, a Pakistani, collected them by force and left them to live on their own elsewhere. Mimi had eluded the haris and, from then on, she would scamper in fright every time she saw him coming her way.
We did not like mimi sleeping on our doormat because of her habit to enter the house ahead of us when we open the door. So we would always keep her at bay outside the building’s main door, although she would often find a way to our doormat when some tenants left the main door open. Mimi would always run toward me each time she saw me or the three of us coming home, usually rubbing her body against the legs of my trousers to my consternation. “Mimi, stop it, go away!” I didn’t know if she understood, but she would go to the other side, allowing me to open the door which I would then close hurriedly.
Once, our child asked me if we did not appear like weird people for feeding the cat while the other tenants of the building did not seem to like her. I told her not to mind what other people think of us. “What others think of you does not change what you are or who you are,” I told her, happy over the thought that I was able to impart the virtue of being one’s self, without sounding like I was lecturing. “As long as you don’t step on other people’s toes, don’t let other people’s opinion bother you; you have to hold on to what you believe in.”
Although mimi oftentimes annoyed us, we started missing her when we could not find her for several days in a row. When I asked our haris where the cat had gone, he told me that one tenant shoved her into his car and dropped her elsewhere. “I miss mimi,” our 16-year-old daughter would often say each time we saw stray cats rummaging through the rubbish of the ubiquitous big blue garbage bins.
I have little compassion for stray cats, which are part of the symptoms of urban blight. In fact, I hate stray cats when I hear them quarreling loudly outside our house in the wee hours of the night. But I feel a tinge of sadness and a sense of loss every time I think of mimi. She reminds me of how urbanization is forcing us to sacrifice core values for our own convenience and wellbeing.
I don’t pray for the safety and welfare of stray cats, do you?
By CASIANO MAYOR JR.
Although she was a stray cat, she did not act like one. Unlike the common stray cats which would avoid humans coming their way, mimi would go near us with the cats’ usual greeting “meow” as if telling us that she was a friend. Over time, we got fond of her and christened her “mimi”, the generic name of endearment Filipinos give to cats they become fond of. One day after driving my daughter to school and my wife to the hospital where she works, I saw mimi sleeping on our doormat. “Mimi, get out of my way,” I told her.
She did not move. But when I opened the door, she spritely entered the house ahead of me, her tail raised high, and walked with a regal gait as if she had springs on her feet. She reminded me of the pampered cats in the animation film “The Aristocats” which my wife and I had bought for our child when she was in nursery school. I shouted at mimi to come back and get out of the house. She strutted past our living room, which also serves as our dining room, and went straight to our bedroom where she seemed to be sniffing for something.
Was she looking for a rat to catch? I would have no way of knowing. I could sometimes read the minds of people, but it is difficult to read the minds of cats. Knowing that she would not listen to my pleadings, or even scolding, I opened a can of sardines I took from our kitchen cabinet, made her smell it and lured her out of the house. She followed me and I led her to the parking area where our occasional feeding session started on a plot under unspruced plants where I had placed a plastic plate.
My daughter and I often talked about mimi and how different she was from the common stray cats. We speculated that perhaps she was a domesticated cat abandoned by her masters. The topic reminded me of the problem of overpopulation in the growing metropolis like Jeddah where sprawling home backyards have to give way to high-rise buildings to accommodate more people.Our daughter had once suggested to her mother that we adopt mimi as a pet but my wife firmly put her foot down with a sermon: “And where do you think she will sleep and move her feces?” My wife added that the cat’s furs strewn all over the house could cause us asthma. Besides, I told our child that taking cats and dogs for pets is prohibited in Saudi Arabia and that we have to abide by the Kingdom’s laws and respect its culture and traditions. I have read somewhere that the mutawas consider cats and dogs to be symbols of the decadent Western culture.
So I just kept on feeding mimi under those untrimmed plants beside the parking area whenever we had table leftovers. We did not feed the kittens as they would hide under the discarded furniture every time they saw us. I think mimi was breastfeeding them. We found out that there were six of them when our haris, a Pakistani, collected them by force and left them to live on their own elsewhere. Mimi had eluded the haris and, from then on, she would scamper in fright every time she saw him coming her way.
We did not like mimi sleeping on our doormat because of her habit to enter the house ahead of us when we open the door. So we would always keep her at bay outside the building’s main door, although she would often find a way to our doormat when some tenants left the main door open. Mimi would always run toward me each time she saw me or the three of us coming home, usually rubbing her body against the legs of my trousers to my consternation. “Mimi, stop it, go away!” I didn’t know if she understood, but she would go to the other side, allowing me to open the door which I would then close hurriedly.
Once, our child asked me if we did not appear like weird people for feeding the cat while the other tenants of the building did not seem to like her. I told her not to mind what other people think of us. “What others think of you does not change what you are or who you are,” I told her, happy over the thought that I was able to impart the virtue of being one’s self, without sounding like I was lecturing. “As long as you don’t step on other people’s toes, don’t let other people’s opinion bother you; you have to hold on to what you believe in.”
Although mimi oftentimes annoyed us, we started missing her when we could not find her for several days in a row. When I asked our haris where the cat had gone, he told me that one tenant shoved her into his car and dropped her elsewhere. “I miss mimi,” our 16-year-old daughter would often say each time we saw stray cats rummaging through the rubbish of the ubiquitous big blue garbage bins.
I have little compassion for stray cats, which are part of the symptoms of urban blight. In fact, I hate stray cats when I hear them quarreling loudly outside our house in the wee hours of the night. But I feel a tinge of sadness and a sense of loss every time I think of mimi. She reminds me of how urbanization is forcing us to sacrifice core values for our own convenience and wellbeing.
I don’t pray for the safety and welfare of stray cats, do you?
No comments:
Post a Comment